Magical Manuscripts Need Transcribing

Chicago's Newberry Library is putting a call out for volunteers to help transcribe Magical Manuscripts that are in the Library's collection.

Visitation, from the Heures de Nostre Dame selonc lusaige de Rome. c.1400. Case MS 188.

Photos from Newberry Library

In an Atlas Obscura article by Tatiana Walk-Morris the manuscripts are part of the Museum's multidisciplinary project Religious Change, 1450-1700.  One is able to go to the web site and help to transcribe part of a rare manuscript.  

 
A detail from The Book of Magical Charms, one of the manuscripts the Newberry Library is seeking to transcribe(example from Tatianna Walk-Morris article on Atlas Obscura)

Apparently there are three manuscripts to work on: The Book of Magical Charms, The Commonplace Book, and Cases of Conscience Concerning Witchcraft. 

If my Latin was better and if I could read 500 year old handwriting I would be jumping in.  Alas, fair Latin I know not well.  And as I was exploring how this project works, I felt my eyes crossing as I closely examined the handwritten English.  I thought my handwriting was bad. I would hate to get a potion mixed wrong because someone couldn't read their handwriting.  

I look forward to checking out the upcoming exhibition.  This is a fascinating project and it will be wonderful to explore the transcribed texts.

New manuscripts online

In the newest copy of The American Scholar there is a small article by Noelani Kirschner regarding the Virtual Hill Museum & Manuscript Library Reading Room.

According to Kirschner scholars at Saint John's University in Collegeville, MN have digitalized manuscripts from ancient times to the present.  Their work is now online and ready to be explored.

The researchers have visited "540 libraries in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and India" in an effort to "scan and upload hundreds of thousands of manuscripts while exchanging metadata with other libraries."

How awesome is this?!?  Pretty cool.  As Father Columba Stewart explained many of these manuscripts have "been virtually unknown to scholars outside the Middle East. . . (and will) significantly shift or transform how people view the history of the region".

There could be interesting quotes and passages in this manuscripts. Perhaps some of them will end up in a 21st Century Zibaldone.